D&D 5E Eberron: Rising from the Last War Coming For D&D In November

A new D&D campaign setting has appeared on Amazon -- Eberron: Rising from the Last War. It's slated for November 19th, at $49.99.

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Explore the lands of Eberron in this campaign sourcebook for the world’s greatest roleplaying game.

This book provides everything players and Dungeon Masters need to play Dungeons & Dragons in Eberron—a war-torn world filled with magic-fueled technology, airships and lightning trains, where noir-inspired mystery meets swashbuckling adventure. Will Eberron enter a prosperous new age or will the shadow of war descend once again?

• Dive straight into your pulp adventures with easy-to-use locations, complete with maps of floating castles, skyscrapers, and more.

• Explore Sharn, a city of skyscrapers, airships, and noirish intrigue and a crossroads for the world’s war-ravaged peoples.

• Include a campaign for characters venturing into the Mournland, a mist-cloaked, corpse-littered land twisted by magic.

• Meld magic and invention to craft objects of wonder as an artificer—the first official class to be released for fifth edition D&D since the Player’s Handbook.

• Flesh out your characters with a new D&D game element called a group patron—a background for your whole party.

• Explore 16 new race/subrace options including dragonmarks, which magically transform certain members of the races in the Player’s Handbook.

• Confront horrific monsters born from the world’s devastating wars.

There is an alternate cover for game stores:

WotC's Jeremy Crawford confirmed that "The book incorporates the material in "Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron" and adds a whole lot more."

 

[Staffan]

Nope, sorry, it did not. I just ran a Dark Sun game a few weeks ago. The Will and the Way, published in 1994, used the core Complete Psionics Handbook psionics rules that were used in the original boxed set. However, the Dark Sun Monstrous Manual expansion books that were published after the Revised boxed set included psionics stats for both the original and S&P systems. So they did continue using both systems.

(Because it was a bad new system and a lot of people hated it.)

Revised 2e psionics had some good points, such as psionicists actually getting better at their stuff at higher levels. But the psionic combat was... bad. Both concept-wise and execution-wise - concept-wise because using the same resource (PSP) for both "hit points" and to power attacks is shady in the first place, and execution-wise because in most cases the cost for using a psionic attack was higher than the damage it would deal.

 

[MarkB]

But I never felt that having psionic rules were ever necessary for the Kalashtar in Eberron, they were simply presented as the most likely option and source for Psionics if one decided to use it.

Yeah, that was always my take on them too. I felt like I'd definitely want to get hold of the Psionics rules if I were ever going to actually run a campaign in Sarlona, but for just having some Kalashtar characters in the party, it's not needed.

 

[DragonBelow]

Nope, sorry, it did not.

Ok, I stand corrected.

(Because it was a bad new system and a lot of people hated it.)

My group liked it a lot, as we switched to it 100% when it came out.

I think Skills and Powers included conversion notes for The Will and the Way. I have to check my books.

 

[DragonBelow]

Yeah, that was always my take on them too. I felt like I'd definitely want to get hold of the Psionics rules if I were ever going to actually run a campaign in Sarlona, but for just having some Kalashtar characters in the party, it's not needed.

All the flavor pointed at them being primarily psionic users, could you avoid that? sure, specially if you don't want psionics in D&D. I happen to like Psionics.

 

[gyor]

According to Tito Rising from the Last War is MUCH bigger then Wayfarer's Guide in both page count and average words per page count.

I might get this book after all, but no rush to decide, I want to know more.

It sounds like the first proper Setting book for 5e, what the SCAG should have been in size.

 

[Parmandur]

According to Tito Rising from the Last War is MUCH bigger then Wayfarer's Guide in both page count and average words per page count.

I might get this book after all, but no rush to decide, I want to know more.

It sounds like the first proper Setting book for 5e, what the SCAG should have been in size.

Well, Ravnica was very similar in style to how this is shaping up, though not quite as large: but the Guildmasters Guide does seem to be the style moving forward. A Faerun guide along these lines might happen eventually, but not likely to anytime soon, as long as we get it in pieces in Adventure books.

 

[gyor]

Well, Ravnica was very similar in style to how this is shaping up, though not quite as large: but the Guildmasters Guide does seem to be the style moving forward. A Faerun guide along these lines might happen eventually, but not likely to anytime soon, as long as we get it in pieces in Adventure books.

I think we will get something like this for Zakhara and Kara Tur in 2020, it's why they hired those cultural consultants. Faerun they seem dedicated to doing piece meal no matter how slow and annoying that is. We are getting a Baldur's Gate Gazetter in BG: DiA this year.

 

[MarkB]

All the flavor pointed at them being primarily psionic users, could you avoid that? sure, specially if you don't want psionics in D&D. I happen to like Psionics.

Sure, and if they're available I'm happy to use them. But if they're not, it won't break anything to have a few Kalashtar around without them.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

it's not a fear of the new; it's simply- why bother? There are tons of settings that you can use, so if you're looking to run (or, ruin) a setting, why not just do it to FR? I mean, that's what traditionally happens.

It absolutely is neophobia, or unreflected setting conservatism and I think it's easy to see that. Note that this not a political thing - this kind of conservatism is strictly small c and can be found in anyone of almost any age or background.

To demonstrate it, simply consider if Dragonborn, for example, were introduced to AD&D in 1E or 2E, would GH have found a way to incorporate them? Yes, unquestionably. GH kept integrating new elements in 1E and if it had received fair attention in 2E would have continued to do so.

GH is a huge setting with diverse and isolated nations. It would be extremely easy and not particularly disruptive to introduce more recent material, especially with a time jump. It would not change the flavour particularly either, because they would be minor new elements in a vast tapestry.

Most D&D settings are inherently kitchen sink and/or designed to incorporate new elements, and GH is no exception.

The reason people think otherwise, I would argue, is simple ossification. Because GH was barely touched even in 3E were it was nominally the default setting, people see it as a fixed, fossilised thing, not the once-growing and changing setting it was. But that does a disservice to GH, frankly. It deserves more than to be a museum piece, unchanged and forever stuck in some late 80s idyll.

In some alternate reality where GH kept strongly developing through the 90s and beyond, people are arguing the same things you are about GH, about the FR! By all means pay attention to what make GH, GH when moving it forwards, no one wants a repeat of the clumsy FR 4E situation (I say this a 4E fan generally but that was a mess), but don't put it in amber because you don't even want to consider how easily modern races and classes could fit into GH.

 

[DEFCON 1]

In my Eberron games I specifically did not include the kalashtar as a race option because I was trying to narrow down the number of campaign-wide concepts/threats/plotlines we might be running with. There's no bigger pain than having one PC whose primary character issue is with the daelkyr, another with an Overlord, another with Lady Vol, another with the Dreaming Dark, and another with the Inspired. It just becomes too unwieldy no one gets enough time, and there's no central big bad you now have a half-dozen. So for me, holding Sarlona, the Inspired, and the kalashtar out of my current campaigns helped ease that.

That being said... had I allowed someone to play a psionic kalashtar I would have done it one of two ways-- I'd either have used the Mystic playtest rules (as I did for my last Curse of Strahd campaign that had a psionic PC), or I would have created a Psionic Origin sorcerer, and then put together a very specific spell list for them that was primarily a lot of divination, abjuration, and movement-based transmutation spells.

I'm a firm believer in making customized spell lists for Sorcerers in 5E so that they all fall within the parameters of the origin from which the sorcerer gets their power. That's what I did for my Aberrant Dragonmark sorcerer PC whose dragonmark was time magic. I selected spells whose abilities were easily refluffed as time manipulation and gave the players the spell list to select their time magic from. Anything normally on the sorcerer spell list that I didn't include in the time magic list because there wasn't a good refluffing available was not an option for them. And I'd do this again for other sorcerers I'd ever have in my campaigns, including any potential kalashtar who wanted to focus on psionics (at least until Dark Sun and the psionics rules get released.)